Seems to be an issue with my notebook

This seems actually to be a problem with my notebook. The
same card works fine (and fast) on a friend's notebook.
I also tried a 3cXFE575BT. Again, this is fairly slow with
my notebook (even worse than the MF3k), but works fine with
other laptops.
Is it possible that this is a driver problem, or is it flawed hardware? Here some boot messages:

Message Administration

This form allows you to delete, move, or copy one or more messages.
You can move messages by copying and deleting the original.
The action will be applied to the messages you select above and all replies to those selected messages.

If you want to copy or move messages, specify the
HyperNews path of a destination forum or message that all messages
will be copied or moved to. The destination must already exist, so
maybe create it first.

Path of Destination (a Forum or Message): (e.g. "test")

Notify Subscribers at destination
NO

If you want to delete messages (the default), specify
that here. If you want to move messages, you need to delete
the original messages; placeholders will be left pointing to where
they were moved.

Delete Messages
NO

Caution: After deleteing messages
(the default), if you have not copied them (i.e. no destination above),
then the selected messages are not be recoverable.